


who is the lamb, who is the knife?

by foundCarcosa



Category: True Detective
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-20
Updated: 2015-02-20
Packaged: 2018-03-13 21:39:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3397301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foundCarcosa/pseuds/foundCarcosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short exploration of the idea that the most Faustian temptation can appear even in the guise of an antisocial atheist.</p>
            </blockquote>





	who is the lamb, who is the knife?

Rust Cohle. Gaunt, somber, surreal. He didn’t fit, Marty thought before he caught himself— he seemed to exist at the edges of reality, like a mirage shimmering hesitantly on the blacktop, a man barely living but certainly not dead yet.  
He wasn’t Christian, okay, fine, but there was something of the Christ figure in him, and when Cohle started murmuring about Gethsemane in the car, Marty’s stomach squirmed uneasily, and he wished he’d turned on the radio instead.

But Cohle didn’t stop talking, once he started. It wasn’t a flood, but a trickle, a Bible verse here, an unnatural metaphor there. He had a voice like sawdust and hot tar, sticking to Marty’s skin and grinding into his pores, baking into him like the Louisiana heat.  
Distant, aloof, that was Marty’s partner in a nutshell — but somehow standing next to him was too close, being in the same car too intimate, and he stopped sleeping in the bed with his sweet, longsuffering wife, because it felt like Cohle was in there with him, too.

In the church where they questioned the pastor about the antler-crowned girl, Cohle drifted towards the altar, and a shadow passed over him and settled on Marty, making him shiver violently although the sun was beamin’ down on him like a searchlight. _Someone pass over your grave, Hart?_

"Pray that you do not fall into temptation." Book of Luke. Jesus on the Mount of Olives.

_No, but someone’s sure diggin’ me one, and it just might be me._

\---------------------

He’d been drinking, but not so much — not like the time he rang Marty’s doorbell and stood there weaving gently in the evening breeze, a bouquet of flowers dangling limply from his long fingers.  
Drinking didn’t improve his charm any, Marty thought, looking at him askance under the naked bulb in Cohle’s embarrassingly spartan apartments, but it sure did _something_ to him.

"Look, I can’t stay long," Marty began, but Cohle wasn’t paying him any attention. His eyes had drifted up to the wooden cross above his mattress. After a moment, Marty’s did too.

"Are _you_ a Christian?” Cohle asked, his voice musing, almost dreamlike.

"Ain’t everybody?" Marty countered defensively, then shrugged, "Well, besides you. So you say. Sure, I’m Christian."

"Think Dora Lange was?"

Marty shifted uneasily, shoving his hands in his pockets, then taking them back out again and rubbing them together. He cleared his throat. “Don’t see how that matters now, one way or t’other.”

Cohle turned to him, giving him a rare moment of actual eye contact. “There’s something pure about sacrifice. No matter t’whom. Our flesh is impure by design, we’re impure by design… but—”

"Now look here, Rust, what’d I tell you about that weird talk, huh?" Marty stepped towards him with accusatory finger raised, and Cohle stepped forward with chin lifted defiantly, long throat bared, as if to say, _Go ahead. Deny me. Silence me. You won’t stop hearing me, either way._

Marty lost the thread, dropped his hand. Cohle was practically in his face now. The sharp smell of whiskey mixed with the sweat steaming off his sun-baked skin; his jaw flexed and his head tilted, and Marty tried to ignore the curve of his neck under his razor-sharp jaw—

"You were sayin’?" Cohle drawled, insolently, and Marty’s hand shot up quick as a shot and clamped around that narrow throat before either man could blink.

"Give me _one good goddamn reason_ why I shouldn’t…” As Marty struggled for an appropriate threat, he felt Cohle’s neck push against his palm, Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed, his mouth falling open as he reflexively sought air and his red-rimmed eyes clear as they locked on Marty’s, clear as ice in a sunlit glass, clear as the peal of church bells on Sunday morning.

Cohle’s mouth twitched in what could have been a smile but what could have also been a grimace, his narrow shoulders falling back, his lean body stretching forward in an arch that drew Marty’s eyes, brought them down to Cohle’s tented crotch before he could stop them, brought a feverish sweat to his skin and a rush of blood from his aching head.

 _Pray you do not fall into temptation,_ and Cohle chuckled, throaty and raspy, a vibration against Marty’s weakening hand that he felt in every nerve in his body.


End file.
